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Post by deuce on Mar 10, 2016 20:31:59 GMT -5
Just starting Prisoner of the Horned Helmet by James Silke. I have owned this book since '88, but have never read it or the second book that I also picked up back in the day. Outside of the four books in this series, I cannot find any info on Silke. Perhaps a pen name? What do you folks think of the series? Anyone out there know a little about this mystery writer? Nosy minds need to know... It was lame enough that even Frank Frazetta's great covers couldn't save it. They used almost none of it for the comic version in the '90s (which also sucked). The reboot 10yrs ago? Also sucked. Basically, Frank and his estate never really knew what they wanted to do with the character. Silke certainly didn't bring anything extra to the table. Beforehand, it looked like it might be some cool cross between Conan, Kane and Elric. It wasn't. Morgan Holmes has the exact same opinion.
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Post by deuce on Mar 12, 2016 11:43:40 GMT -5
Hugo Award-winning editor, Gardner Dozois, had this to say... "While we're talking about fantasy, I've been reading a lot of what's being called "the New Sword & Sorcery" lately, stuff by people like Joe Abercrombie, Scott Lynch, K.J. Parker, Daniel Abraham, and it struck me what the one essential influence was that aesthetically separates the New Sword & Sorcery from the Old Sword & Sorcery, since both have sword-wielding adventurers, monsters, and evil magicians: it's the Spaghetti Western. Clearly Spaghetti Westerns have had a big influence on the TONE of this new work. Gone are the gorgeous, jewel-encrusted temples stuffed with huge snakes and giant idols with jeweled eyes and slinky sinister priestesses in jeweled bikinis where Conan used to hang out. Instead, the most common setting seems to be a remote jerkwater village, either parched and sun-blasted or drizzling and half-buried in mud, extremely poor and mean, swarming with flies, packed with venal, dull-eyed, illiterate peasants who are barely smarter than morons, if they are, and who have no power or influence in the wider world, and certainly no money, and who stare blankly and slack-jawed at our heroes as they enter town, either kicking up clouds of dust at every step or splashing muddy water. You know this place. Think of every degraded village in every Spaghetti Western you've ever seen."
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Libaax
Wanderer
Burhan the Puntlander
Posts: 25
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Post by Libaax on Mar 12, 2016 18:55:12 GMT -5
Thats very interesting and might by i have sensed lack of weird imagination,fantasticness of the new version of S&S. I like Abercrombie as newer,fatter book version of David Gemmell but i dont like calling his stuff new sword and sorcery for many reasons of and one of them being what Dozois is saying. The setting are so mundane,boring just like those pointless psuedo English medevil worlds you see in Epic fantasy ala Game of Thrones.
This is exactly why i miss early 2000s S&S writers like Paul Kearney because his books were S&S as weird,fantastic setting,look as the old S&S.
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Post by deuce on Mar 13, 2016 6:21:29 GMT -5
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Libaax
Wanderer
Burhan the Puntlander
Posts: 25
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Post by Libaax on Mar 13, 2016 9:32:59 GMT -5
The link names says everything in that it is what S&S means to them. Im not a big fan of Elric,Corum and co as S&S stories but i see their place in broadening the scope of S&S. I would not exclude any cosmic,weird S&S by Moorcock because that would mean excluding the legendary few S&S stories by Lord Dunsany, the few Jack Vance ones their version have some similarities with Moorcock type S&S.
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Libaax
Wanderer
Burhan the Puntlander
Posts: 25
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Post by Libaax on Mar 13, 2016 9:46:04 GMT -5
Funny enough having read all their input the ones that got it best is the ones that wrote S&S in the old school way, in its golden age post REH meaning Moorcock and Tanith Lee. Those authors said it well the whole vibe,setting where supernatural horror meets fantastic adventure stories etc The ones that write S&S/Heroic Fantasy bordering into Epic fantasy ala Abercrombie think S&S is simple singl hero POV,down to earth goals versus the world shattering events,armies fighting each in epic fantasy. Funny some of them that dont write S&S usually think the genre died with Howard/Leiber/Moorcock "oh it hard so see Sword and sorcery novel it usually pulpy short story adventure..."
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Post by deuce on Mar 13, 2016 12:00:32 GMT -5
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Post by deuce on Mar 16, 2016 15:12:23 GMT -5
Thats very interesting and might by i have sensed lack of weird imagination,fantasticness of the new version of S&S. I like Abercrombie as newer,fatter book version of David Gemmell but i dont like calling his stuff new sword and sorcery for many reasons of and one of them being what Dozois is saying. This is exactly why i miss early 2000s S&S writers like Paul Kearney because his books were S&S as weird,fantastic setting,look as the old S&S. Hey Libaax! Yeah, Kearney is a good writer. it seems to me that a lot of these new writers want to "keep it real" and be about "the now" so much that they're missing the point. Everything being varous shades of grungy grey isn't particularly thrilling nor does it provoke a sense of wonder. In a pre-industrial culture, people lived closer to natural reality. They might be working a grueling manual job, but they were living. No real time for boredom or detachment. Those kinds of attitudes could see you dead fairly quickly. I get a sense of a lot of ennui and detachment from the settings in the new "S&S".
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Post by deuce on Mar 20, 2016 8:51:36 GMT -5
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Post by Jason Aiken on Mar 22, 2016 1:43:26 GMT -5
Cool, great article by Morgan. Thanks for posting that Deuce. I ordered that two story collection. I've just read Eshbach's "Isle of the Undead" in Weird Tales, but I enjoyed it. Had some weird vampire type creatures in it.
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Post by deuce on Apr 4, 2016 16:03:23 GMT -5
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Post by deuce on Apr 6, 2016 17:08:04 GMT -5
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Post by robp on Apr 7, 2016 4:46:22 GMT -5
Hey Libaax! Yeah, Kearney is a good writer. it seems to me that a lot of these new writers want to "keep it real" and be about "the now" so much that they're missing the point. Everything being varous shades of grungy grey isn't particularly thrilling nor does it provoke a sense of wonder. In a pre-industrial culture, people lived closer to natural reality. They might be working a grueling manual job, but they were living. No real time for boredom or detachment. Those kinds of attitudes could see you dead fairly quickly. I get a sense of a lot of ennui and detachment from the settings in the new "S&S". I did enjoy the first three Abercrombie novels, and the couple that followed. Since then however I'm getting a bit tired of the genre. Recentyl gave up on Luke Scull's Grim Company - it gets a bit dull after a while hearing about the ageing hero's creaking knees and the fact that everything smells of sh~t So I'm back into sci-fi for the mo, just started Jack Campbells Lost Fleet series, enjoying it so far
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Post by deuce on Apr 12, 2016 8:44:07 GMT -5
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Post by robp on Apr 18, 2016 5:46:37 GMT -5
Thanks man will give that a try!
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